Leonardo DiCaprio is one of the finest actors of his generation, giving incredible performances in the likes of The Wolf Of Wall Street, Inception, and The Revenant. He's certainly set himself a high bar but with his latest film, Killers Of The Flower Moon, he may have surpassed that, delivering the best work of his long career so far.
That's according to Thelma Schoonmaker, Martin Scorsese's legendary editor who has worked with the filmmaker for over five decades, receiving numerous accolades over that time including two Oscars.
Speaking to GamesRadar+ on the red carpet of the film's recent premiere at the BFI London Film Festival, she explained that early on into shooting they knew DiCaprio's performance was going to be something special: "Leo - I think really this time he's done his best work, given his best performance. Marty called me from the set on take one of him being on the stand - he told me we are just going to run it like that with no cuts to anybody else, except for one to the prosecutor."
I think really this time he's done his best work, given his best performance
Schoonmaker didn't stop there with her praise for the film's starry cast, adding that she also thinks another regular Scorsese collaborator, Robert De Niro, is also at his best in the new movie. When asking her about online comments which call De Niro's performance here his greatest work to date, Schoonmaker nodded in agreement: "Oh yeah! I think he was fantastic in so many movies including The Irishman but with this one, he just found a way to do it that's so interesting. His character does love the Osage, but he was also killing them! He's got this weird voice that he picked and it's so good - it's actually perfect."
In the film De Niro plays real-life figure William King Hale, a respected man in Osage County, Oklahoma who was secretly ordering the murders of several members of the Osage Nation. This included several of his nephew's in-laws, with DiCaprio's Ernest Burkhart encouraged to marry Lily Gladstone's Mollie as part of the corrupt scheme. Known as 'the Reign of Terror', this series of crimes later led to the birth of the FBI.
Based on journalist David Grann's book of the same name, from that simple plot description alone you may be wondering how it exactly fits into Scorsese's vast and impressive filmography. For Schoonmaker, though, that's quite clear: "Actually, we've made a few other films that have this kind of sub-theme of a culture that we don't know about, and learn about whilst making the film. For example, we made one about the Dalai Lama having to leave Tibet because of the Chinese invasion [1997's Kundun]. That was incredibly beautiful to work on because of the Tibetans who were in that movie, all 400 of them. It was the same thing here.
"There are so many Osage people that are actually in the movie or working on it, and learning about their culture was a great gift, it was so moving to meet them. Then someone like Lily Gladstone who plays Mollie, she's not even an Osage, she's from Blackfeet heritage, but she learnt the language completely and the woman who taught her said she learned it so well that she sounded like her mother. That was great! It was wonderful to work on the Osage scenes as even when we don't have subtitles you know what's going on - you just hear the Osage and it's so beautiful."
There are so many Osage people that are actually in the movie or working on it - learning about their culture was a great gift
Schoonmaker is right - those scenes are among the best in the film, which is saying something given that it continually impresses throughout its lengthy 206-minute-long runtime. And in fact, it could have easily been longer, with the editor revealing that they started out with a different cut: "Originally there was a longer cut. You put everything in the first cut so there's always a long cut in the beginning - then you say 'oh my god'. So, we came down on this pretty quickly. It's wonderful as a lot of people tell me they don't feel the runtime and want to see it over and over again."
Upon telling her that I would be keen to see what an even longer version involves, Schoonmaker joyfully laughs, but doesn't comment on whether we will see an extended cut one day. For now, 206 minutes is more than perfect.
Killers Of The Flower Moon will release in US and UK theaters on October 20. It will then be available to stream on Apple TV+ at a later, currently unspecified, date.
For more on the movie, check out our interview with Scorsese from the UK premiere. And to see how it compares to the rest of the director's work, here's our ranking of the best Martin Scorsese movies.
